podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
Horror Used to Be Escapism. Now It’s a Mirror
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Oct 30, 2025
Over the past decade, horror has evolved from cheap thrills to cultural reflection—tackling everything from systemic oppression to collective trauma. Audie talks with writer and filmmaker Tananarive Due, who explains how we got here. And why, in an age defined by fear, horror might just be the healthiest thing to watch.
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. For the last decade or so, we've basically moved out of the kind of torture porn era of the horror genre to this prestige adjacent thing, right? These films that are winning over mainstream audiences, hardcore fans, and investors.
Tananarive Due
00:00:18
It's cheap to make, which often it is. It can have very spare settings, like a cabin in the woods or an empty road is your setting. You can star unknown actors because it's not celebrity driven. It is more plot driven. So it literally doesn't matter who a lot of the actors are in horror movies. As long as you have a clever idea and you can get even a little bit of money.
Audie Cornish
00:00:40
And the result has been a run of horror films selling more than scares.
Tananarive Due
00:00:45
You can make something really, really special and impactful. And I think there will always be those creators, no matter what happens on the corporate level. Indie horror will shine and corporate horror will follow the money.
Audie Cornish
00:01:00
Horror writer and Bram Stoker Award winner Tananarive Due is here to help us figure out what it is about this moment, this decade, that's turned horror into the most daring, diverse, and revealing genre on screen. What does the box office renaissance of fear say about how we feel about the world we're living in right now? A conversation for people who watch through their fingers, that's next.
Audie Cornish
00:01:29
'Thanks to Ryan Coogler's Jim Crow Vampire Gothic Sinners and Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, there's real talk that a horror film could take home an Oscar for Best Picture, which hasn't happened since the early 90s, Silence of the Lambs. But I, a person who is like so scared of horror films, I prefer to read the Wikipedia entries ahead of time to ward off nightmares. Well, I'm not equipped to handle this on my own, and so that's why we're bringing in Tananarive Due. She's a UCLA professor. She teaches a class inspired by Jordan Peele's 2017 racial horror, Get Out, class is called The Sunken Place. She's also an award-winning horror writer with more than two dozen titles to her name. And she says her most recent, The Reformatory, which is about a 12-year-old boy trapped in a haunted reform school in the segregated South, well that it's been her most successful yet. So I asked her why she thinks that is.
Tananarive Due
00:02:23
I think maybe the times are contributing to that. People are curious about the past and how we got where we are.
Audie Cornish
00:02:29
And also seeing a present in which getting locked up is a very visceral, easily accessed fear.
Tananarive Due
00:02:37
'Exactly. It's not, it feels near-fetched, let's just say, that a child who commits basically a schoolyard kick, which is the inciting incident in my novel, ends up in this, in this nightmare. And a lot of parents are dealing with this at, in their schools and with their children being basically overly policed.
Audie Cornish
00:02:56
When you look at horror films now, what is the crossover moment for you that makes it officially horror as an expert?
Tananarive Due
00:03:03
So I, as a viewer, have to be scared, and the one thing that will scare me as a viewer most reliably is when the protagonists are deeply scared for their lives.
Audie Cornish
00:03:13
Maybe that's why I think it's so complex doing very stark political things or kind of eat the rich type horror because it almost, I don't know, something is sapped from it when you feel the weight of our current politics so plainly.
Tananarive Due
00:03:30
Mm, yeah, that's where metaphor is useful. Zombies, ghosts, demons, hunting people, I'm with that. But racist hunting people has crossed a line from horror to the horrific and to the realistic. And that to me is not entertaining.
Audie Cornish
00:03:47
And yet Sinners is one of the biggest films of this year, probably gonna be an awards contention. At its heart is a very basic vampire film. And even though there's racial overtones and like the history is embedded in it, what do you think sets it apart? Because here you have someone, Ryan Coogler, who's done every genre imaginable now, right? He's done a boxing film, he's done Marvel film. And he said, I wanted to do a monster movie.
Tananarive Due
00:04:13
Ask yourself this. How many times would you have wanted to watch Sinners if it had been the Ku Klux Klan invading the juke joint and killing everyone?
Audie Cornish
00:04:23
Oh yeah.
00:04:24
'Full hoods and torches and burn it to the ground. That is not entertaining. That's Tulsa. That's Rosewood. Nobody wants to see that, okay? I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see it that. So you make it the vampires. And yes, Remick, one of the vampires, or some of them are white, but actually everyone gets turned and then it becomes sort of this post-racial kind of imagery. So, but Remick is more of a monster than he is a white man, quote unquote. In fact, he professes not to be racist even. So it's, that's what you need. You need something to distance us from the actual reality of real life horror.
Audie Cornish
00:05:06
Now why horror?
Tananarive Due
00:05:08
Oh, why not? Horror is life. No, actually, I was practically raised from the cradle. My late mother, Patricia Stephens Due, was a civil rights activist who loved horror movies. And I think she loved horror movies because of the trauma she went through, not just as an activist, but growing up in the Jim Crow South. Now, I didn't know this as a kid. I just thought she was cool. You know, she loved or like a roller coaster ride like I did.
Audie Cornish
00:05:35
Yeah!
Tananarive Due
00:05:36
So she was always showing us like these old universal like repeats, okay, because I wasn't around when they were made, but like the wolf man and Frankenstein and Dracula, like old school universal classics, that classic.
Audie Cornish
00:05:50
These are the classics of the classics. So it's like films of the literary stuff. Can you recall the first thing she showed you? And I ask, cause I have little kids and I'm often, and they get scared of things all the time, you know? They're just like, oh, I don't know, that's too much. And so I have wondered like, at what age would I want to try and introduce horror to them?
Tananarive Due
00:06:11
'You know, every family accidentally stumbles upon the right or wrong time to introduce their kids to horror. I don't feel like I was overly traumatized, but I never forgot the original, The Fly from the 1950s, which, spoiler, has this terrible ending where the scientist has been reduced to the size of a fly and he's in a spiderweb going, help me, help me. And there was something about that in consequence. Like you can just vanish from the world where no one can hear you. You are voiceless. You have no agency. That just terrified me. So I'm thinking that's what got me as a kid. I related to the monsters so-called in that movie. They were being exploited. They were big mistreated. And I think my mother gravitated to some horror for that same reason. Sometimes it's because the monster scares you. And sometimes it's because you see yourself because society has framed you as the monster.
Audie Cornish
00:07:12
I was thinking about what it must be like for this generation that would have come up with the last decade or so, decade and a half of horror, where there has been a lot of what I would call prestige horror. So this isn't kind of like, I feel like what I grew up with, which was a little bit more like Nightmare on Elm Street, which has its own sort of irony in camp and stuff like that now. And the slashers, this is Hereditary. You know what I mean?
Tananarive Due
00:07:41
Get out.
Audie Cornish
00:07:42
Babylon and Get Out. Yeah, stuff that's sort of like invites classroom syllabus readings.
Tananarive Due
00:07:51
True. There's a lot—
Audie Cornish
00:07:52
Oh good, good. So how do you define this last decade and a half of which some people are saying, look, this has been a really big year for horror and we're at some kind of peak.
Tananarive Due
00:08:02
'There is all kinds of horror. Some of it is just popcorn munching, you're having a roller coaster ride. There's no deeper meaning to it. Then there are films like Sinners and Get Out, which do have a deeper meaning. So it's entertaining on the surface. I think that's the one thing horror has to fulfill is it has to be entertaining on a surface. But underneath, absolutely, and especially now in chaotic times and uncertain times, and times when it doesn't seem so inconceivable that your house could be overrun by armed strangers or dangerous strangers, or you might be kidnapped off the street. So none of that feels far-fetched right now. And I think contemporary horror is really speaking to our moments of uncertainty and helping us to sort of address those fears and validate those fears.
Audie Cornish
00:08:54
'And I love how they go about real-world issues, right? In an entertaining way. I find that throughout this amazing horror boom, I'm even embarrassed to say this, I just go to the Wikipedia and read the plot summary.
Tananarive Due
00:09:06
Wow.
00:09:07
To see what I'm dealing with first. Cause I actually don't want to just sit down to some truly gory insane slasher. I know some people come to horror for that, but I'm not really here for that. So I am the person who I don't care about spoilers. The journey is the destination. And is there help for me? Do you think I'm a bad person?
Tananarive Due
00:09:29
No, I have...my sister likes to know what's going to happen at the end of a movie before she sees it I cannot understand it, but it is a thing.
Audie Cornish
00:09:38
But can you see why for horror? Because we're...Maybe it's because I came up it maybe my 20s like saw and what was called torture porn was the horror that was out there. I actually to me didn't come up in the like renaissance the way people are talking about it now the last ten years It was almost like a return to a kind of exploitation period and lots of people have had critiques of it so when stuff started getting good, right when people started talking about Blumhouse and Midsomar and you know all of these films and then of course in 2017 this turning point of Jordan Peele's Get Out which was very clearly like this kind of racial parable. I wasn't psychologically ready to jump in.
Tananarive Due
00:10:25
No, that's true. This is a different horror era. Sinners comes to mind because there were a whole lot of people who were not necessarily horror fans who wanted to be a part of the cultural conversation, but they were afraid. So those of us who are horror fans were saying, oh, it's not scary.
Audie Cornish
00:10:41
Yes.
Tananarive Due
00:10:43
Because I mean, which is not true. It absolutely is scary. I mean in retrospect, I feel like maybe I lied to a couple of people by accident because—
Audie Cornish
00:10:50
Yeah, it was dark. There's some visuals that I was like, oh, but yeah, I understand what you're saying.
Tananarive Due
00:10:57
But when I think it's scary, I think about hereditary, you know, and like really super grim and sometimes unredemptive feeling, you know. Horror, whereas Sinners was so redemptive to me, even though it has its tragedies and it has it scares, it's about so much more. It's about the past, present, and future. And like you were saying, it's set. In the Mississippi Delta of the 1930s, but it's really a statement about where we are now in terms of race relations and what these interactions mean. So for me, that overrode all of the horror. And I was telling people, oh, it's not scary, it is so important. But horror can be scary and important at the same time. And I actually think—
Audie Cornish
00:11:42
I actually think that's the key to ones that cross to the mainstream. That is literally the requirement. It's got to it's got to actually work as entertainment in order for it to convey its other messages. Because many films did come out after Jordan Peele's Get Out, not by him, that had similar themes. Oh, here are some black people in an experience. That's not quite what it seems. Or is it? It's kind of like what it's seems. And I just, people were like, these are not good. You know what I mean? Because they didn't work.
Tananarive Due
00:12:14
Horror can seem like a vehicle for that. Because what happened was so horrific, whether you're talking about indigenous genocide or slavery or some kinds of immigrant experiences, I call it going after the thing itself. Lynching, okay, whoa, that, now when I see a rope and a tree, I am no longer entertained. Now you're talking about things that happened to my forebears, things that are in ancestral memory, things that are actually triggering. Whereas, what the, I think, more experienced horror creators know is that, yeah, you might want people to, in the back of their mind, think about lynching, but what we're really seeing is a monster chasing you.
Audie Cornish
00:12:59
'Still ahead, horror isn't just about jump scares. How a love of horror might actually make you better at facing real-life fear.
Tananarive Due
00:13:08
Horror helps us rehearse for survival behaviors, and even if the characters don't survive, because in horror sometimes they don't, spoiler in life, none of us survive, right?
Audie Cornish
00:13:19
That's after the break.
Audie Cornish
00:13:22
Am I trying to escape fears? Am I try to rehearse fears? Am I, like, help me understand what I'm doing when I find relief in horror.
Tananarive Due
00:13:36
All of those things. It definitely was escape, but it was also preparation. The class I teach at UCLA is called The Sunken Place, and it's about racism and survival. Survival behaviors that appear in horror movies can sometimes actually help us in life because the characters who survive in horror are those who move, World War Z, as Brad Pitt's character said, if you move, you survive. So sometimes you gotta run. Just knowing that might save your life. Like if you're in a parking lot and your instinct is telling you, this doesn't feel right, but I'm too embarrassed to run, the horror fan is like, I'm running. I don't even, and if I see someone else running, I don't need to ask why they're running. I'm going to run with them, okay? If I hear a—
Audie Cornish
00:14:26
When I think of the mass shooting slogan from I think it's the FBI where they're you know when they do trainings with you, they say run hide fight.
Tananarive Due
00:14:33
Yes.
Audie Cornish
00:14:33
That pretty much is the horror film that is survival kit.
Tananarive Due
00:14:38
It is like, what's near me, I can pick up as a weapon. I don't care if it's a coffee mug. I will brain you with this coffee mug, you know? It's like, pick up a weapon, trusting your instincts. I think the more comfortable sometimes, the more comfortably we grow up sometimes, the less likely we are to believe that bad things will come to the door or bad things what happen outside of our homes. Whereas people who grew up in neighborhoods where they saw bad things and they experienced bad things. Already kind of have those survival behaviors, and yes, it's rehearsal. Horror helps us, no matter how we grew up, horror helps us rehearse for survival behaviors. And even if the characters don't survive, because in horror sometimes they don't. Spoiler in life, none of us survive, right? So it's not even necessarily the point whether or not the character survives. The point is what do they do to stand up, understand what's happening to them? Let go of their disbelief and denial to accept it. Bring other people into the conversation so we can come up with a plan together and fight. Do your best. Find the demon book, find the hidden ring, find the tunnel, the ritual, the incantation, the holy water, whatever it is you gotta do. You are trying until the very last frame of that movie to survive.
Audie Cornish
00:16:00
When you look at the images and choice of monster of today, what do you see in the last couple of years, which have been a weird mix of kind of things that are a nod to past ideas, remixed in a different way.
Tananarive Due
00:16:18
'I think the key is evolution. All of us are using old tropes, you know, in some kind of way, it's a haunted house, but then maybe in a more contemporary light, a haunted-house becomes about domestic horror and true life horror, right? So Sinners is a great example of evolving the vampire trope. Yes, there's sexiness. Nobody's gonna tell a Michael B. Jordan fan that he's not sexy as a vampire.
Audie Cornish
00:16:46
They don't need two of them, yeah.
Tananarive Due
00:16:47
And the music is so seductive in centers that even if you don't necessarily find the actors attractive, you're like, that music sounds pretty good. I might wanna go outside and dance with those vampires. But at the same time, it's a message about cultural vampirism, right? Sucking the arts of another community, the experiences of another that's not your own. And it becomes kind of a mirror for our society beyond just the sex. It's also about sucking a community dry.
Audie Cornish
00:17:21
And the flip side of that is the rise of, I guess, the prestige B movie in a way. When I look at the series of films starring Mia Goth, who's done Pearl and X and Maxxxine, these are films, I'm not gonna lie, I've seen them all after my Wiki review, just to see what the fuss was about. And trying to understand how those films connect with either the legacy, of horror or this moment today. And what do you see in, again, these kind of new versions of things?
Tananarive Due
00:17:56
These are very nuanced and dare I say arty films. And that's also a new approach and all horror is meant to create an emotion. And that emotion is dread and there are many paths to dread. So this Mia Goth, I mean, she's just such a layered actress. She looks so innocent on the one hand but she's so treacherous and dangerous on the other hand. I think that there are ways that that's an old trope going back to something like the bad seed, you know, like way, way, back in the black and white days. But with a new sheen, looking through history, there's one of them that's set in the 70s around the adult entertainment industry and then—
Audie Cornish
00:18:39
Yeah, but it's relevant because of so much of it is about thwarted female ambition.
Tananarive Due
00:18:44
Yes.
Audie Cornish
00:18:45
Or female or ambition as accelerant, right, to to a darker path, like her path through Hollywood, through the generations that she's playing. And I remember watching it and being like, this is very clever.
Tananarive Due
00:18:58
'See, this is why I think, yeah, like you're the worst non-horror fan I think I've ever met, because you watch them all, and you understand and analyze them so well. So I think you just have to admit you are a horror fan.
Audie Cornish
00:19:14
Alas, alas. I think it's because I get so upset when they are dismal or slasher only. And I am obsessed and love them when they, when I do like a bit of messaging. And then I see other stuff. Sorry, Final Destination 205. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not there. Oh, come on. Oh, okay, get it.
Tananarive Due
00:19:34
Oh, come on, Final Destination? Come on. I think a lot of the classics have come bigger and better in 2025. The latest Final Destinations, the latest Evil Dead, I mean, just sort of amped up on steroids. I love them all. It's not so much that it has messaging, but let's say the cast is more diverse than it would have been 30 or 40 years ago, or the marginalized characters will survive. In a way they would not have survived 30 or 40 years ago. That's its own kind of messaging. Horror can be an amazing metaphor and I don't want to get too spoilery, but horror fits that just right. Even something like Good Dog, which stars a dog, is about something profound. And this is a movie from the point of view of a dog. And I won't spoil the movie in terms of what it's about, but sometimes you watch these horror movies and you wonder, wow, was all this fantasy stuff just an interpretation through the character's mind, or was it really literally what we were seeing on the screen? And Good Dog is one of those films that makes you sort of question everything you saw when you get to the ending.
Audie Cornish
00:20:45
I do, I have always enjoyed the way horror has dealt with grief.
Tananarive Due
00:20:49
Yes.
Audie Cornish
00:20:49
I think there's just a whole world because when you're going through grief, it's so profound. It's so overwhelming. There is no way to depict it beyond, I feel like, horror and opera.
Tananarive Due
00:21:03
Oh my gosh. Yes!
Audie Cornish
00:21:04
You know what I mean?
Tananarive Due
00:21:04
The scream.
Audie Cornish
00:21:05
Like in terms of the real emotion that you have, even a good drama doesn't quite cover it in a way. I think sometimes when drama does grief. It's just sad and long and very slow.
Tananarive Due
00:21:17
It can be overwhelming and grief is a great doorway for horror and a very common doorway for horror. I mean, think of your favorite horror movies, Hereditary, Midsommar, Jordan Peele's Nope even opens with a death and grief. Grief is a character in the story. I think the reason it's so effective is because grief for a lot of us is the first horror we experience, right? From the time we're children and we lose a grandparent or even a great grandparent. The idea that someone can be here and then they're gone. And also then realizing that means that we will be here and then be gone because you can't separate grief from your own fear of death. You know, no matter how much we try.
Audie Cornish
00:21:57
No, that's pretty much it.
Tananarive Due
00:21:59
So you're right. When you go right at it, it's maudlin and it's sad and it is not entertaining, but horror can turn grief into a monster.
Audie Cornish
00:22:10
That was author, screenwriter, and UCLA lecturer Tananarive Due. Her most recent book is called The Reformatory. Happy Halloween, everybody, and we'll see you next week.